California snow pillows and snow courses (CDEC)#

cdec-stations · theme stations · live

SWE, snow depth, precipitation, temperature and more from the California Data Exchange Center: the California Cooperative Snow Surveys (CCSS) snow pillows and the manual snow-course network. Station ids are CDEC’s three-letter codes (QUA).

import easysnowdata as esd

aoi = (-121.94, 46.72, -121.54, 46.99)   # Mount Rainier

inv = esd.stations.inventory(aoi, networks="cdec")
obs = esd.stations.load(inv, variables=["swe", "snwd"],
                        time="2023-10/2024-09")

No account needed

Every route to this product is open. Nothing to set up.

Sources#

source

provider

credentials

resolution

extent

temporal

latency

notes

cdec (default)

vector_http

none

—

California

~1920/present (courses), ~1980/present (pillows)

hours

JSON data servlet plus scraped station-metadata pages; no account. SWE prefers the adjusted sensor (82) over the raw one (3)

Where each route points#

cdec — California Data Exchange Center live

https://cdec.water.ca.gov

Variables#

variable

units

dtype

nodata

categorical

precip

mm

float64

—

no

rh

%

float64

—

no

snwd

cm

float64

—

no

soil_moisture

%

float64

—

no

solar

W/m²

float64

—

no

swe

cm

float64

—

no

temp

°C

float64

—

no

temp_max

°C

float64

—

no

temp_min

°C

float64

—

no

wind_dir

degrees

float64

—

no

wind_spd

km/h

float64

—

no

Provenance#

Licence · Public domain (California state government data)

Cite the data as

California Department of Water Resources, California Data Exchange Center (CDEC); California Cooperative Snow Surveys.

Documentation

Loader · easysnowdata.stations.load